Checking in

I'm back to a busy busy schedule at work so it's hard to post on week days. How are you doing on the Pre-Thanksgiving Challenge? I overate 3 days on fruit and nuts, which is not good, but...I'm just observing it for now and letting myself learn the lessons I need to learn. I want healthy eating to be a choice, not an exercise in willpower. I usually feel like eating the most healthy foods in proper quantities. I guess I'm just letting myself be reminded of that through experience.

As I mentioned before, one of my goals for the challenge is to optimize my protein intake. I'm trying to get stronger at the gym and want to help that with my food intake. I'm monitoring my food intake with cronometer. Now this is just something fun I'm doing so don't feel you should have to do this also: Following Dr. Fuhrman's food plan will provide you with plenty of all your necessary nutrients. But it is instructive to see what foods have the highest protein. I can see where I can tweak to get more protein. For example, I can cut back my raw carrots a bit and replace them with sweet peas. I love peas so that's easy to do. The other thing that's very noticeable is that fruit has a lot less protein per calorie than green veggies (leafy or otherwise). But fruit has a lot of other healthy nutrients so it should be part of the diet. I find 1-1.5 lbs per day of fruit is a good amount for me. I've been eating veggie bean soup and also putting edamame in my salads every day. The combination of the soup, edamame, and lots of green veggies in the salads gives me about 14% protein which is good for building muscles. I could optimize it more but I love me carrots. Today I got some mediterranean pine nuts from Dr. Fuhrman. He recommends these and pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds for optimal protein after a workout (along with beans and veggies). I'll add those in to next week's salads.